Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It 

Gina Kolata

iGen: Why today’s Super-Connected Kids are Growing up Less Rebellious, more tolerant, less happy—and completely unprepared for adulthood …

Jean M. Twenge

Every Note Played 

Lisa Genova

I’m a Duck 

Eve Bunting

We publish in each issue one page of children’s book reviews, and we feature each year a special section spotlighting what our reviewers believe are the previous year’s most attention-worthy kids’ books in the fiction, nonfiction, and picture book categories. Of all the books published in 2017, our WORLD Picture Book of the Year is The Watcher (Eerdmans). Author Nikki Grimes and illustrator Bryan Collier developed it for an audience older—8 and up—than typical picture book users. It begins with the text of Psalm 121 laid out above a collage cityscape.

Eden’s Outcasts: The story of Louisa May Alcott and her Father 

John Matteson

Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters 

Erica Komisar